At a meeting of AT&T’s top leaders at the company’s headquarters in Dallas, Randall Stephenson, the chief executive, sounded a victory note. The wireless provider was on the verge of a transformative deal that would turn the phone company into a tech and media giant.
It was about to take ownership of Time Warner, the entertainment colossus behind HBO, CNN and the Warner Bros. studios. Stephenson praised his new prize but also took a moment to take a small jab at the company he was about to acquire, according to two people with knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private meeting.
“These guys back in New York,” he said, referring to boldface executives like HBO’s Richard Plepler and CNN’s Jeff Zucker, “they think they’re ballplayers. They’re not ballplayers. They’re executives.” The company says Stephenson never made such remarks.
Five years later, most of AT&T’s top media executives have left or were ousted (although Zucker remains) and over 2,000 workers have been laid off. And AT&T has decided it can no longer sustain its media ambitions. Last week, it announced it would spin off the business into a new entity that would merge with a rival programmer, Discovery Inc.
Now it is back to primarily being a wireless phone company, with all of the issues that entails. AT&T still faces a crushing debt load of nearly $170 billion, and an expensive build-out of its 5G network, as well as rival carriers who seem to have a jump on the next generation of fast mobile internet service. AT&T will be able to lower that debt after the Discovery deal, and it has a healthy wireless business.